A Fox Under My Cloak (42 page)

“Very good, sir,” said the Chef, promptly putting down the tin of milk. “Here's hopin', sir!” Down went the raw spirit in the skinny neck. “Now, sir, polish off them prunes. Very 'ealth-giving, sir. Now for some cream——” He seized the tin before Phillip could get it, and put his lips to one of the two holes punched in the otherwise unopened end. This was the servant's idea, to keep away flies, which swarmed in the billet.

“Can't let you do my work, sir, I know my duty, sir. Many's the time I waited in the officers' mess in India, sir, and served the young gentlemen just out from Belaite, sir—what the ignorant calls Blighty today, with no knowledge of Hindustani.”

No cream coming from the yellow-crusted hole, the Chef shook the tin, muttered, “Them flies bin an' bunged it up agen,” listened at one hole, for some reason; then, putting the other hole to his lips, he drew a deep breath and blew with bulbed cheeks so that a jet of cream was directed expertly upon the prunes. They were watery prunes; why didn't he soak them, as suggested, for twenty-four hours, as Mother did, to get the rich, dark brown sweet juice? Now they would be tasteless, the juice mere cold coloured water.

“There you are, sir,” and putting the plate before Phillip, he stood back, shaking the empty tin. “Not a drop missed the target, sir! Go on, sir, stoke up, it's very health-giving, is cream.”

Phillip began to laugh to himself, as he thought of a shag sitting on its favourite rocks. If only Desmond were there with him, to share the fun!

“What, don't you want no prunes neither, sir?”

“I don't feel like any food just now. By the way, you old rogue, about those sandwiches you have been giving me—where do you get the beef from? Pinch it from the ration dump?”

“Me, sir? Me half-inch and get the wrong side of the red-caps, sir? Not Twinkle! Nearly fifty years of good conduct, sir, why, I wouldn't be so daft as to spoil me record, sir.”

“But don't you supply that estaminet, what's it called, the Demi Lune, with beef sandwiches? Come on, where does it all come from, you sprucer?”

“Promise you won't let on, sir, if I tell you? Well, me and a business partner oo is a butcher in civvie street do a little tradin' with a Frenchie what buys up 'osses, sir, a nice clean beast the 'oss, a clean feeder like a bullock, sir, flesh comin' from good oats an' 'ay, sir, what more could you want?”

“Where does the French knacker get 'em from, Chef?”

“That ain't my business, sir. I arst no questions, and get told no lies, in a manner of speakin'.”

“Killed by shell-fire, you mean, Chef?”

“What cleaner end to an 'oss, sir, than a sudden shell? It's as clean as the sled on its skull in a knacker's yard, in my opinion. Why waste good meat? Corn-fed beef, or corn-fed 'oss, where's the difference? An Irishman'll eat a donkey, a Hitalian a pussy cat, diddekais eat 'edge'ogs—everyone to 'is own taste, sir. I'll tell you what, sir, only a little while ago, just before you come in, all the lot I'd cut up for tonight in the Demi Lune went like 'ot cakes, bought by an officer for 'is men, sir. My Gor, they're sending out the gran-fers now. When I went to Nooless Mines this mornin', to get them veg you refoosed, I seed the column 'alted by a redcap, and an old gineral on a 'oss come up from the rear, a-roarin' and a-bawlin', because the redcap wouldn't let the head of the column carry on without a pass. 'E got a move-on, 'e put everyone in sight under arrest. I recognised 'is face, 'e were a proper hot-tempered bloke in India, a proper broth of a boy. Often I see 'im in Quetta when I were a boy just 'listed, sir, a real ole pig-sticker 'e were. 'E were in the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, we all called 'im ‘Crasher'.”

“Crasher, did you say? Brigadier-General Joliffe-Howard?”

“That's 'im, sir! ‘Crasher' by name an' crasher by nature! When I see'd 'im gallopin' up this morning, I says to myself, ‘That's caused it, Twinkle, me boy,' I says. ‘It's all up wi' the old Alleyman now,' I says to myself. Nobody can't kill Crasher. 'E'll never die—'e'll only fade away—but if 'e 'as 'is way, that little lot under 'im 'll soon be with the
Underground
'Oozars.”

“He was commanding the territorial brigade I left little more than a fortnight ago in England! They had no idea, then, I'm sure, of leaving for the front! Well, I'm damned!” exclaimed Phillip. “Look here, I must go and have a look at them. Fancy Crasher and old Strawballs, and all those others, out here! What good can they possibly be, at their age?”

In the excitement the Chef helped himself to more whiskey. He poured it down his throat; then squaring his shoulders, while a wide grin split his face, he began to hold forth with his real personality, hitherto partly suppressed in the presence of an officer: the old soldier freed by drink from the old soldier cowed by discipline.

“There's cunnin' in an old dog, what takes the place o' life, sir. Though I must admit that the other orficers looked a proper lot of twots, all waitin' there, wiv the big push goin' on, and them the reserves what were needed, and all allowin' of their-selves to be 'alted by a pushin' redcap because the leading C.O. bin a naughty boy and gone and lost 'is late-night pass. They talk about man-power, why not the women to do the clurkin' down at the base, then they can send that little lot o' skrim-shankin' fireside lancers and Royal Stay backs up 'ere wiv' a rifle and baynit——”

But Phillip was not listening. He sat still, while within him various feelings were in conflict—curiosity, desire to show off his staff brassard, warm friendliness, caution based on
self-interest
—but they could not touch him, he was still on gas; besides, he had been placed on light duty. Even so——

“Twinkle, get me a good packet of sandwiches! I'm going back for an hour or two, just to have a look at Crasher and Co.! I'm on light duty for four days, so tell the senior sergeant to carry on. I'd like to have a last look at that lot. My God, they've got a nasty surprise coming to them. Fill my water-bottle
three-quarters
full of chlorinated water, then fetch me a dry pair of socks. Quick!”

When he was ready to go he topped up his water-bottle with whiskey, and slinging it with haversack and map-case outside his mackintosh, went out of the billet, walking-stick in right hand, brassard on arm; and coming to the square, walked beside the tramping column of weary infantrymen with long strides that overtook the files continually stopping and breaking to allow down-moving transport and ammunition limbers to pass them; and coming eventually to the cross-roads over the main road to Lens he arrived level with the halted “poor old ‘
Cantuvellaunians
',” recognising the weary, bedraggled faces of many of his old acquaintances, including Chick, O'Connor, Captain Rhodes, Infant Hercules, and others. He avoided looking at them directly and walked on, until he came to the head of the
column, and saw Jonah the Whale, and Strawballs talking together. “It's bloody rot,” he heard the colonel say querulously, “taking away our cookers!” Not wanting to be recognised, Phillip walked on.

T
HE
reserves which had come upon the edge of the battlefield (as Phillip was returning to his billet) were tired, hungry, and bewildered. For the past five days two divisions of untried troops fresh from England had been marching from the area of the Channel coast. They had paraded each evening at 6 p.m. and continued along the roads bordered by poplars until shortly before sunrise each morning. Many of the battalion transport sections were without experience of horses and driving; battalion, brigade, and even divisional staffs were likewise without
experience
of moving masses of men in the field. Some brigades had less than half a dozen officers and N.C.O.s who had seen service in the present war; in the brigade commanded by “Crasher” Joliffe-Howard not one man or officer had been in France since the war.

The night marches had been ordered lest the columns—each division took fifteen miles of road when on the march—be seen by German reconnaissance aircraft. Troops had remained in billets during each day.

On the night of the 24th the divisions were lying about twenty miles from the battlefield. At 7 p.m., the time when Phillip was in the front assembly trench with his section being placed at the gas emplacements, the leading brigades started their fifth night march, a short one of from between seven and eleven miles, a distance taking, normally, from three to four hours. The march took double that time. All along the narrow roads to Noeux-les-Mines and Béthune there were prolonged halts. Horses drawing wagons were unable to get up slight hills. The infantry columns were marching in fours; there was a yard to spare on one side of the road only, then came the deep ditches. The roads used had been marked
Down
Traffic
Only
; convoys of lorries and motor ambulances, with lines of horse wagons,
were continually passing the upgoing troops, who were forced to walk in files beside the road, often scrambling in and out of ditches. At every cross-roads were blocks, causing the broken columns to lose touch, and some even to turn off at right angles in error. There were level crossings with long white painted poles across the road, while trains shunted, whistled, stopped, rolled on slowly. At one crossing there was a delay of one and a half hours due to an accident on the line.

Corps headquarters had made arrangements for the free passage of marching troops with the French railway authorities, but the French could not carry out the time-table. Those portions of broken columns which had lost their way and taken wrong turnings came back and found themselves in the great
congestion
of heavy supply transport behind an imminent battle. Thus very tired infantry, many with no hot meal at the end of the march, since the travelling steel cookers had been lost, lay down just before dawn under hedges and beside ditches and tried to sleep; but hardly were their eyes shut against the light of a drizzling dawn revealing distant pyramids and dumps when the guns opened up, forty minutes before the battle was joined.

The reserves, which the First Army commander fighting the battle had requested, again and again, to be two thousand yards behind the British front line, were then six miles back, and in no fit condition to march on until they had rested.

They had been kept back deliberately by Field-Marshal Sir John French.

*

The field-marshal was sixty-three years of age. His body was heavy on its frame, with abdominal muscles sagging from desk-work, not from indulgence in food. He had reached the time of life when a man reflects rather than acts; and for over a year of war he had been continually frustrated. He had lived with grief: the flower of his army had been destroyed. Anxiety gnawed him, a fox under his cloak.

During early September the field-marshal had passed on to his First Army commander, the spare and active Sir Douglas Haig, Lord Kitchener’s direction for the battle—“… to act with all energy … even though by so doing we may suffer very heavy losses”—while in the field-marshal’s mind were grave doubts of the success of an attack which he had been
ordered to undertake against his judgment, and with too few guns and gun ammunition, and too few men. The field-marshal had been under great and continual strain for over a year; and now constant dread of committing the men under him too deeply—together with a wish to keep raw troops out of battle if the attack was shattered on the strong German defences as previous attacks in the first half of 1915 had been shattered—at Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Festubert and Givenchy—possessed him.

Against these sombre thoughts a bright, contrary idea
persisted
with the field-marshal. If all went well in the opening stages of the battle, he, by keeping the reserves under his own direct orders, would be able to give the
coup
de
grâce
to the enemy. Put in at the right time, used with the Cavalry Corps held within his own command to pursue the enemy’s disorganised forces across the plain of Flanders, he could take the Germans in flank before they could reorganise behind the Scheldt.

Reflection can, with an ageing man who has suffered many strains, become rumination; and rumination, a vice. The
field-marshal
, for various reasons within himself, had decided to keep the general reserve for the battle behind the area of battle. Thus, on Y/Z night, the two divisions, tired from England, had lain up to twenty miles behind the British front line.

General Haig, who was to fight the battle, had more than once suggested that they be moved nearer. He was supported by General Foch, commanding the 10th French Army on his right, who had proposed to the field-marshal that they be brought to within two thousand yards of the corps reserves (which, in fact, did not exist: for the six divisions of the two corps
comprising
Haig’s First Army were all to be used in the assault; and he had no reserves whatsoever).

General Haig once more urged that the two divisions be held ready, by daybreak of zero day, to move forward directly into the battle of pursuit. To this the field-marshal had replied merely that he did not agree: he, as commander-in-chief, would keep the whole of the general reserve in the Lillers area, sixteen miles back, until the course of the battle was known. The
field-marshal’s
two-mindedness in the matter revealed itself in the words of his formal order to Sir Douglas Haig—“Once the enemy’s defences have been pierced … the offensive must be continued with the utmost determination directly to the
front …” while at the same time the field-marshal kept the reserves back.

General Haig persisted. He wrote yet again, repeating his request for the general reserve to be well up behind the assault—“on the line Noeux-les-Mines-Beuvy by daylight on 25
September
”: to this the field-marshal, committed in the first place by politicians to a battle he had no belief in—fearing to send untried troops into a forlorn hope, yet wishing to support his First Army commander with the loyalty of a good soldier—replied “Two divisions … will be in the area referred to in your letter by daybreak on the 25th September”.

They were indeed there, shortly after daybreak; but in no condition to move forward.

*

The assault that morning, of which Phillip with his gas containers and “Spectre” West with his company of Gault-shires were but two small items in the wave of European life destroying itself, had been made by eighteen British brigades of infantry, against a comparatively small force of three German regiments—equivalent in numbers to three British brigades—with one Jäger battalion in support. At a quarter to eight that morning the German front was breached in two places; and at that hour the British reserves were still lying under the hedges and beside the ditches, six and seven miles away. When
eventually
they did march forward, a military policeman on duty at a railway crossing told the brigadier of the leading brigade that the troops could not enter the battle area, because he did not have in his possession a pass. The military policeman, a lance-corporal, was obeying orders; the leading brigade was halted for nearly an hour.

*

The field-marshal, with only his personal aides, had left his headquarters at St. Omer unexpectedly to visit the Château Philomel three miles south of Lillers on the evening before the battle. From the château there was no communication by wire with his armies; and only the civilian French telephone system to St. Omer. Sir Douglas Haig sent, at 7 a.m. the next morning, a staff-officer by motor car to inform the field-marshal of the success of the assault by the 47th London and 15th Scottish divisions towards Loos and Hill 70, and to ask that the two reserve divisions be put in immediately.

Again at 8.45 a.m. General Haig sent another messenger, to report that all the brigades of the 1st and 4th Corps were either in the German trenches or on the move there; and to request that the reserve divisions be pushed in at once. Two valuable hours had already been lost.

At 9.30 a.m. (when Phillip was dozing in the Fosse Way trench) the field-marshal replied by telegraph, that the divisions would “move forward to First Army trenches as soon as the situation requires and admits”.

At 11.30 a.m. the field-marshal visited Sir Douglas Haig and told him, at last, that he would arrange to put the reserve divisions under his orders.

From First Army at Hinges he motored to Noeux-les-Mines, where he arrived about noon. There he saw the corps general under whose command the divisions had been placed. Having discussed the general situation with him, the field-marshal, at 12.30 p.m., gave the corps general the order to move his divisions forward. Five and three-quarter most valuable hours had wasted away.

Fifty minutes later, at 1.20 p.m., the corps general informed Sir Douglas Haig that the reserve divisions “were under him and marching to the areas ordered, but were delayed on the road”. Sir Douglas Haig, a devout man, had meanwhile spent some minutes in the privacy of his room, praying on his knees. He was a Scots Calvinist; his mind and conscience were settled in beliefs about righteous living in this world as well as in the next; so to his staff he was invariably courteous and restrained in manner, concealing his anxiety about the field-marshal’s procrastination like the Spartan boy with the fox under his cloak.

*

Meanwhile (as “Spectre” West was sinking into a coma), from various parts of the front, according to many regimental officers, the Germans were on the run. Some had thrown away arms and equipment: field-gun batteries had been abandoned. It was only when they saw that the British had paused after their efforts, and were not being reinforced, that they halted, and came back to their vacant trenches, and took up the fight once more.

Messages sent back took a long time to deliver, owing to clogging mud, and the mêlée of movement upon degraded soil;
thus Sir Douglas Haig believed for some hours that his First Army was “on the crest of the wave of victory, that it had broken through the second and last line of defence in two central and vital places, Cité St. Elie and Hulluch; and that a
break-through
at Haisnes and Cité St. Auguste was imminent”.

The truth was the First Army had spent itself, like a wave with none behind to gather its waters and follow on.

And the jetsam of that wave was two men out of every three men in the battalions of the original assault fallen, broken or dead, to the ground.